Its been a few days
since I have written to you. I am sorry about being irregular. I promise to
keep writing every day from tomorrow. You must be wondering how I have been
doing? Don’t worry, I am here to tell you everything.

I had an amazing 10th
birthday party this weekend. All my friends came to our home for the party. I
showed my room and my wall of drawings to all my friends. Everyone loved the
ceiling of my room where I have stuck little star stickers. I can’t even count
the number of gifts I got. You wouldn’t even believe me, if I told you. It was
a wonderful day. I think Nikita was a
little jealous of my room. Maybe she doesn’t have a lovely bed and a fluffy
mattress in her house, like I do. Anyway, too bad for her. I love my home. I
also love my parents. I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

Mummy and Papa also
love me very much.Every night before
Papa comes home from work, Mummy and I sit at the window and listen to old
Hindi songs on the radio.It is my
favorite thing to do all day. I also know the voice of the anchor of the radio program
and can say it just like she does – “Mohammed Rafi se Lata Mangeshkar ki aawaaz
ko lekar aayi hoon main RJ Neha!”. Maybe I will also grow up to be an RJ or maybe
I will do what Papa does.I don’t get
to see him much because it is usually bed time for me right after he gets home.
But I know he does something amazing. He comes home at 8pm every day and sits
down on the sofa by the window. He then says, in his warm deep voice. “Where’s
the chai Mrs. Sharma!” Hehe. I like imitating the way he says it.

What else happened,
that I haven’t told you? Oh yeah, I overheard Papa and Mummy talking about
moving houses. I don’t know what that means.Were they talking about moving to a different city? But, I love my
beautiful room and our lovely house and all my friends, even Nikita. I will be
really sad if they decide to move. I don’t know how I will say Goodbye. Uhhhh.
Even thinking about it is scary. Please God. Tell my parents that they don’t
need to move. That this place is perfect.

I am going to go sit
at the window with mummy now. The radio program is almost about to start.Don’t worry dear diary. I will tell you
everything that happens. I am sure nothing bad will happen. I have my lovely
home and family forever.”

***

It was like any other day in St. Catherine’s Home for the
Orphans. It was 7pm and Matron fumed into the girl’s dormitory. “Everyone into
the dining halls, right now! Everyone means everyone. Whoever goes late will
not get dinner tonight. Nikita get up! Where is your friend Neha? Why is her
bed empty? Oh! look at all this mess. She has been drawing on the bunk beds
again. I should not let you girls bring chalk into the dormitory. Now I will
have to clean all these scribbles. Where is she anyway?

Oh! Of course, there she is, sitting by the window! This
girl is always distracted. Neha! Stop singing out of the window and get to the
dining hall.” Neha quickly jumps out of the window and runs to her bed. She
grabs her diary, stuffing it in her front pocket and runs to join the girls
lining up for the dining halls.

Matron closes the big windows of the dormitory hall. She
hears the radio playing downstairs. And then she hears the loud voices of
people quarreling, drowning out the sound of the music. “Where is my damn Chai!
Mrs. Sharma!”

“Oh! It’s the Sharma family downstairs.” – Matron exclaims.
“Always fighting, those two. Thank the lord they are moving out next month. It
can’t be healthy for the girls to always be overhearing adults fighting. Especially
Neha. No wonder she always seems distracted. I think she will be happy to hear
they are moving out. I will tell her first thing tomorrow morning. “

Her hands were full of the seemingly endless chores to be done around the house. “Most of life involved cleaning up after something” – these were her words of wisdom from years of experience on this Earth. It always seemed, we were cleaning up after our mistakes, other’s mistakes, our responsibilities, our food, our mess – the list was endless. But she was happy to live her life cleaning up after everything. She was the kind of person who took pride in taking care of those around her – being a provider: a mother hen; as her friends used to teasingly call her in college. Also, she had grown to be independent and responsible. After splitting up with her husband several years ago, she had vowed to not ‘need’ anybody else in her life. Trusting and depending on someone for years can suddenly be taken away, leaving you unprepared for how to deal with life’s everyday activities. She had learnt to get over that the hard way. Now, she was happy. Happy to be responsible for her own actions. It was like taking control of the wheel. She found, she liked her life this way – the mother hen that she was.

But she has not thought about her husband from her past life for several years now. Her life was filled to the brim with the sound of another little laughter.

***

Every morning it’s the same. This must be the millionth time I’m picking up these toys and clothes in her room. Sigh. But I don’t think I should be hard on her. Isn’t this the age to make a mess? She will spend all her life being prim and proper. If I don’t let her have her fun now, she will grow up to be like one of those dull robot ladies I see on the train. Staring blankly. Not even returning a smile when I smile at them. I hope I am not letting her get away with too much though. It is hard being a parent. I don’t know why as a younger girl I thought, I’d make a great mother. There isn’t any handbook given to you with all the guidelines when you become a parent. Or perhaps there is one and I just didn’t get my copy.

“Neha! Neha! Where have you run off to. Come sit at the table and have your cornflakes. It’s your favorite captain sugar flavor.” She will be 5 years old next month. I have already planned an elaborate party. It will be a mother-daughter day full of activities. I’m going to take her to her favorite park, where she goes down the slide a hundred times until her stomach feels queasy. We will swing on those chain swings that even I love to swing on. Side-by-side with my little girl. Then we will take a bus to Marine drive where we will sit and count the number of crabs that we can see, scuttling along, on the rocks. We will have cotton candy at the food stalls in Chowpatty. I usually don’t let her have those but, on her birthday, I will let her have whatever she wants from those food stalls. In the evening, we will buy one of those helium balloons and then go home. We will play all night trying to catch the balloon from the roof and let it fly again until she is too tired to stand up anymore. Ha-ha, I feel like, I’m dreaming about her birthday more than she is. But then, she doesn’t know all this is going to happen.

But I am a little concerned about her. Lately she’s been picking up an old habit of hers that I did not like. She talks to herself and says she has an imaginary friend – Bunty! Can you believe that? She has named her imaginary friend. Isn’t five a little too old to still be having imaginary friends. In any case, it is definitely not a good habit. I’m going to search the internet for how I can deal with this problem. I feel bad calling it a problem. She is a child after all, and a really smart girl too. She could identify all the animals in her children’s encyclopedia book within a week of getting it. Am I being too harsh with this?

No. This needs to be weeded out of her. That’s the rule of my house. No imaginary friends. Why does she need an imaginary friend? She has me to play with. I have been her best friend and listened to all her Gudiya stories. I even do the voices for all her gudiyas’ tea parties before putting her to sleep. I can’t remember if I also used to do this, imaginary friend game, as a little girl. But I don’t like it one bit. Maybe tomorrow morning when we go for our routine walk in the park, I will have a talk with her. This is the reason, why I didn’t let her play with the other kids in the block. These days I see the kids. I see them running about swearing and playing on cell phones. Where do these kids even get cell phones? I don’t want my Neha to grow up with such friends. I know what’s best for her. But now she can’t stop talking about this “Bunty”. The other day I saw her sitting by herself in her room, at the doll house. She was talking to herself! I overheard her introducing all her gudiyas to Bunty. I am honestly a little scared and for the first time in a few years I feel like I don’t know how to deal with something. Tomorrow, I will talk to her. I will be stern if I must. No imaginary friends. Period!

***

“Hey isn’t that No 9. waali Mrs Sharma, sitting on the swing. I don’t think I have ever spoken to her”

“Yeah, she keeps to herself. Doesn’t she. Oh, you just moved here, you’ve probably not heard about her story. So, her good-for-nothing husband left her several years back, good riddance and Mrs. Sharma was finally happy with her little child. But poor Mrs. Sharma, I don’t know why her stars are cursing her. Soon after, her daughter of only 6 months, had a severe fever and passed away in the hospital. They say she didn’t cry at all and did not talk to anyone after returning from the hospital. She locked herself in her house for a few days but after that she finally came out and started living life normally. She would come out for walks in the morning and be seen at the grocers. She would just not talk to anyone, even when we tried approaching her. So, we let her be. Poor girl – has been through so much.”

“Haan. Its really a sad story. At least she’s been looking healthy and happy the past few years.”

“But see, look at her sitting on the swing. Don’t you think she is whispering something or talking to herself or something. I asked my husband and he said people with post-traumatic-stress disorder do that. You know what I think,

A ray of light – a photon: begins from her womb. An electron jump that released her into the universe. Now she is ready to take on the world. Zooming past things at the speed of light. She is excited to get to her goal. What that might be she does not know. She is a photon – a particle of light.

She is going so fast that she can’t see what is going on around her. She only sees the other being like herself that are zooming along at her speed. She finds that even amongst them, she is unique. Some are of different frequencies, some different energies. Some traveling with their families in groups of polychromatic light all from the same parent – the same street light, torch, laser, sun that gave them unto this universe. They are all out here, with her. Zooming along at the speed of light. “This is what being alive feels like”, she thinks to herself. “All of us out here with a purpose, a direction, a goal.”

She doesn’t care much for the slower beings all around her with mass weighing them down. They will not understand the kind of purpose she has. She looks down at these puny beings with mass going about their ridiculously slow mundane lives trying to ‘live’. What a boring and ridiculous way to spend time wasting away.

She also meets groups that have lose some of their members. Rumor has it that they have been lost because they were ‘absorbed’. She is scared of that word. What does it mean to be absorbed, she does not know. Perhaps there is an afterlife. Who knows? Only those that have passed on into the ‘absorbed’ life and a God if there is such an omnipresent creator.

She meets this other photon one day. He sounds interesting. He has a great flair, a charm, an energy that entices her. He will only be near her for a while before his trajectory moves away from her journey towards her goal. He has been telling her about this new wondrous thing. He says that he was ‘Reflected’ – reflected off of something. His journey has now changed direction. He now has a different goal. He seems happy about racing towards a new goal in a new direction now. But this sounds so scary to her. To lose direction, something she has known all her life. What would her life mean if she was to suddenly change direction. She shudders with this thought.

BANG!

She hits a roof and gets reflected. Before she can process what has happened.. BANG!

]]>https://manaswimishra.com/2018/01/10/the-man-that-walked-spoken-word/feed/0eardrummermanLot of Noisehttps://manaswimishra.com/2018/01/08/lot-of-noise/
https://manaswimishra.com/2018/01/08/lot-of-noise/#respondMon, 08 Jan 2018 18:33:18 +0000http://manaswimishra.com/?p=222More]]>A lot of people are making a lot of noise.

They are talking about the message from beyond. There has been a message from the beyond that some people claim is from God. Some people refuse to believe in it and ignore it. Some people fight with the people that believe that the words are from God. Some people are trying to find the real meaning behind these words. They are listening at the wall. The wall from behind which the said words are coming from. Each of these listeners has an ear piece that they are holding upto the wall. Listening hard and fast trying to understand what these words are. Some listeners are able to hear some words or so they think and they start sharing these words with other non listeners. Some non listeners become believers in some listeners. Some listeners become bigger preachers and share more of the words that they hear from beyond the wall. Fights have begin between believers, non believers and even between different listeners and their followers.

A little boy crawls to the wall below the feet of the listeners and finds a crack in the wall. He looks through the crack and sees –

A lot of people making a lot of noise.

]]>https://manaswimishra.com/2018/01/08/lot-of-noise/feed/0eardrummermanChange – Songhttps://manaswimishra.com/2018/01/08/change-song/
https://manaswimishra.com/2018/01/08/change-song/#respondMon, 08 Jan 2018 18:31:10 +0000http://manaswimishra.com/?p=220More]]>The times are a changing
and the hour hand keep pouring on like rain

His pictures are all fading
and the photographs keep crumbling in their frame

Amidst the sound of changes
theres a knocking on my door
Amidst the reel of changes
theres a knocking on my door
Amidst the sound of changes
theres a knocking on my door

Am I surprised to see you,
though I hear your footsteps, daily in the halls

Your voice is but forgotten
and your records haven’t echoed on the walls

Amidst the sound of changes
there you’re standing at my door
Amidst the sea of changes
there you’re standing at my door
Amidst the sound of changes
there you’re standing at my door

I think of what to ask you,
though I talk to you for hours in my head

I close my eyes to see you
you look different but I prefer this instead

Amidst the sound of changes
you keep standing by the door
Amidst the sound of changes
you keep standing by the door
Amidst the sound of changes
you keep standing by the door

will you come inside
and have some breakfast on this table by my side

and tell me all your stories
the ones that happened and the ones you like to hide

Amidst the sea of changes
You are welcome at my door
Amidst the sound of changes
You are welcome at my door
Amidst the sound of changes

Its not everyday
you get to meet a person living out of time

I’ve waited in this cottage
That I built with my sweat in every dime

Within the sea of changes
I greet you at my door
within the sea of changes
I greet you at my door
within the sound of changes
I greet you at my door

I’ve tried so hard to please you
Are you proud of what you see you have become

you’re only just of 25
and I dont recall the tunes you often sung

across the sea of changes
you meet me at my door
across the sea of changes
you meet me at my door
across the sea of changes
you meet me at my door

The times are a’ changing
and I wonder what melodies will come about

when past meets the future
and walk on each piano key without a doubt

across the sea of changes
you are waiting by the door
across the sea of changes
you are waiting by the door
across the sea of changes you are waiting by the door

I am so glad to meet you
my one and only truest friend

Lets share this day together
whats ours and what we keep from them

in the warmth of changes
gushing through the door
in the warmth of changes
gushing through the door.
In the warmth of changes
gushing through the door

(Disclaimer : In this article, I use the words ‘consciousness’ and ‘evolution’ loosely as inspired from the dialogue in the movie)

The movie has two sections of discussions

1) Collective Consciousness – The concept that intuition and choices influenced by instinct are drawn from this conceptual collective consciousness that exists in society. A decision I make is based on what most people in society might make. It is an indirect influence though. The experiment that the movie talks about which makes this apparent is the crossword puzzle experiment. A group of people were asked to solve a crossword puzzle and some statistics were observed from their performance. The next day the daily crossword puzzle was released and kept from this group. They were only allowed to attempt it the day after, when the whole world (or partial world that reads daily crossword puzzles) had already seen the answers. This smaller group while attempting the puzzle statistically did much better than their first experiment results. This shows that they had a sub conscious influence that drew from this collective knowledge, this collective consciousness. (I wasn’t able to find this study, so perhaps it is a fictional creation of the director, but still interesting enough to explore)

2) Instantaneous Evolution – This concept talks about the telescopic nature of evolution. Some initial evidence of evolution were seen when apes took several 100,000’s of years to start waking on their feet, make their vertebrates vertical instead of horizontal. The next bit of evolution like discovery of tools (in the stone age) by Neanderthals probably took a much shorter time – 1000 years. Discovery of metals, electricity, the Internet all progressively got shorter and shorter. Today we see proof of this telescopic nature of evolution in the influence that technology has on the masses in just a matter of weeks of being conceived. This type of telescopic evolution will lead to man constantly evolving. A change in the definition of evolution which was earlier fueled by a feedback of choices and consequences. (A bad choice that led to a consequence led to the particular trait becoming recessive). This will start happening at a much faster level, leading to the evolution of a new type of human. One that evolves continuously in time..

New Thoughts on both these topics.

The telescopic nature of evolution is more apparent today with a game like flappy birds that has permeated all cultures, continents and ages into playing it in just a matter of days of being released. This leads us to understand that the concept of evolution has changed. Earlier man, as an individual, made choices and had a consciousness (influenced both by his personality and the collective consciousness). These choices had consequences that led to the stage of evolution. (The progress of one particular science, technology or idea rather than the other recessive one). But this concept of choices and collective consciousness is now different for a more instantaneous way of evolution.

The collective consciousness defined in the crossword puzzle experiment is now evolved. Earlier man contributed to this collective consciousness with his interactions with the society. In the new paradigm of generation X, our interaction with society has changed. In the older paradigm, when person A traveled or had a life changing or miraculous experience, he would communicate it with his group of friends directly or indirectly. And this group of knowledge would pass by word of mouth or other modes of communication. Also I say, directly and indirectly because indirect communication was also predominant. What I mean by that is, lets say person A traveled to a new country of tribes. He would speak about his knowledge of tribal people and their different or similar ways of life directly to his friends. But he could also indirectly communicate about just using his knowledge to influence his choices in his group of friends. He could be more willing to accept a different item of food or culture and show that his influence to the tribes of the country he visited have changed his personality, and this is being indirectly communicated within his group. This direct or indirect communication is his contribution to the collective discussion of ideas and therefore the collective consciousness.

But today our communication is different. We communicate on social media with pictures and tweets and statuses with hashtags and labels. This communication is a lot more direct because it feeds on our need to communicate. Man would communicate to his group directly or indirectly because he had a unique individual contribution to the group, to the discussion. He could see this by the people he was able to influence within his group or even inspire or oppose him. That was his contribution to the collective discussion. Man was motivated to communicate in order to see the presence of his existence by observing the influence of his contribution on the collective discussion. But in todays paradigm of communication, Man gets his dopamine shots, his motivation from a more direct validation, a number of likes or retweets or reshares. And Man is not just the contributor, he is also the listener. He is also liking and retweeting and resharing other people’s communications. But this communications is no longer indirect. Only the direct communication has survived in this paradigm. A visit to the tribal people of country is now broken down by tags like #travel #tribes #newLands and many other tailor-made labels that make it easier to disseminate information and also for man to consume. Since consumption is important for man. Man knows that in order to observe his existence in the collective discussion he needs to get likes and shares and he is also sub consciously liking and sharing other tags and posts in order for the collective to better reflect his presence as an individual, both by disseminating more tailor made information to the individual and by presenting his posts to the right group of people. This indirect communication means that if person A doesn’t talk about his visit to the tribes of the new country, it is fiction. Just as much as a mad man dreaming up an experience. Sure it influences his choices but in this paradigm of communication only his direct communications of telling people he had traveled, sharing pictures validates the experience.

This leads us to make a different understanding of the collective consciousness. Instead of being an intangible collective consciousness, this can now be thought of as a bigger consciousness that is quiet tangible. It is this platform and database of knowledge on which out individual interactions exist. The databases at google, amazon, facebook, twitter are the big consciousness. We exist within these collective discussions and our presence and influence is validated within this consciousness. Now we must not be scared that this means, we are being controlled by an algorithm. Its instead a different idea. Man always existed within a push and pull of individual and society. Being an individual was important and also being part of a society. Influencing a society by your individuality was the important motivator for the alpha man and fitting in and being accepted by the society prototype of an individual was the motivator for the beta man. In this paradigm of a bigger consciousness that is a database my choices as an individual only affect the small group of people that I directly influence, the 500 people that follow me, the 1000 friends on facebook etc. And the collective decisions of the bigger consciousness are a result of these smaller groups of consciousness that lead to some ideas trending, being advertised as popular or being statistically popular. Because each group is like a big interconnected network of communication that eventually leads to information being disseminated and rising to the top in a pyramid scheme of deletions of ideas. The most popular prevails and is self propagated as trending because of a positive feedback loop of being visible.

This means that I as an individual draw my set of choices and beliefs from my personality and this, new bigger consciousness. When someone dies, I feel more strongly about their death based on the how collective consciousness feels irrespective of whether this deceased person directly influenced my life or not. A famous musician dies and I instantly feel sad because the collective consciousness feels sad, because the musician influenced the group as a whole., despite me having never listened to his songs. This has led to a new form of evolution of a human. A human more closely connected to the bigger consciousness. So as the telescopic nature of evolution leads us to become more and more instantly connected to the bigger consciousness our physical and mental processes will change. A new generation kid is probably much better at understanding social media and the ways of the pyramid scheme of the trending ideas much better. His brain will evolve to have a much stronger connection to the collective consciousness. Sure as evolution has traits surviving and dying some forms of communications, some ideas will die faster than the others. This doesnt mean that one majority idea will prevail. Just like random mutations are still seen in humans, some negative/bad ideas as labeled by the evolution shall still survive and even flourish in smaller circles. But Man, will be motivated to be a bigger part of the consciousness. A tub of water with two drops of food coloring white and red will end up spreading to its neighbors making a bigger circle of white and red until they meet and push against each other in a surface tension war, until the whole tub either becomes a stable equilibrium of both colors or an unstable equilibrium both ready to burst into a united pink color when the tub is shaken by an external war like force. Now sure the individual particles might still to choose to identify as red, white or even abstain from belonging, but the collective consciousness understands this tub as being a pink tub. It shall use this information along with its knowledge of individual particles and their choice of identity to disseminate information and services.

]]>https://manaswimishra.com/2018/01/08/collective-consciousness/feed/0eardrummermanThe Collector – Storyhttps://manaswimishra.com/2018/01/08/the-collector/
https://manaswimishra.com/2018/01/08/the-collector/#respondMon, 08 Jan 2018 18:15:26 +0000http://manaswimishra.com/?p=209More]]>He pulled his eyes apart. It was a weird feeling, opening his eyes. It felt like a vaguely long time since he had done this. Time was still hard to grasp so he stuck to keeping his eyes open and learning to see again. As his eyes were learning to focus, he realized there was more of him. Hands. Legs. Torso. There was a sudden rush of existence and feeling into his entire body as he acknowledged each part that constituted him. By now he had realized he was inside some sort of body chamber. He lifted his hands up against the ceiling of his tiny body-sized home. It wasn’t a coffin. He was alive. That was one thing he was absolutely sure of.

He pushed with all his latent might to swing the ceiling up. His body chamber swung open. The bright light blinded him for a few seconds before he could gather himself and raise himself into a sitting position. He tried to collect his thoughts and understand where he was. It was hard to think of when was the last time he had done that – think.

A lab. Some sort of cryogenic lab? He wondered. He didnt remember getting here or ever seeing the place. But it was real. His initial joy of being able to see lines and shapes were soon getting replaced with the more rewarding task of identifying objects. There was a low hanging light above him. So bright and beautiful. Funnel shaped with a tinge of yellow. He felt comforted in his knowledge of the world. But he was quickly bored just looking at what was around him. He wanted to touch.

He managed to lift himself up and stand next to the bed he was laying on. But walking seemed like a herculean task. He needed to move his leg and knee in a certain way to place the foot ahead of him and balance on both feet. He kept trying to think harder about how his knee should bend in order to walk. Thinking wasn’t helping. Walking just seemed that much harder. He bent his knee awkwardly and crashed onto the table in front of him. At least falling was easy. But then came that wonderful feeling – Pain.

So this was what pain felt like. Before this instant he couldn’t have remembered what pain was. How would someone describe it to him? A perceptual feeling incited by certain nerves to a stimuli? But now he knew what pain felt like. It was nice to be alive, he thought. It was nice to feel pain.

He quickly got up again grabbing onto the table in front of him, and started moving his limbs around without thinking. He had decided to let his limbs learn what walking was and not interfere with his mind. His legs wobbled randomly, but he was able to walk upright soon enough. He must have known how to walk in the past, whatever that was. But he had so much to explore right here in the present. He walked around the room touching and brushing his hands and legs on everything. Thankfully no one was there in the room to see him, he thought slightly embarrassed at his curiosity. He noticed a window on the other end of the lab and he decided to look out. He was not sure what he would find on the outside. Every thing seemed to have an outside – more to explore. From inside the body chamber he wanted to be in the lab, from inside the lab, he wanted to look out the window. But he was satisfied opening each layer of knowledge like a Russian Matryoshka doll. He stumbled to the window and looked outside. Overwhelming.

Buildings, streetlights, cars, shops, benches. There was so much to take in. He was excited about remembering the names of all these objects. It was scary to think of waking up to a world where he wouldn’t recognize the names and uses of objects. But this was good. Familiarity was calming. He decided he was done exploring from this tiny lab room and he started running down a flight of stairs to get out into the open. He was running. Knowledge had been quick to grasp him. He was soon outside in the open air. Amidst tall buildings. A giant city. Yes thats what this was called a city. But where were the people?

This was the first time he had thought about others. Where was everybody? The lab room had been empty and he hadn’t realize the absence of people while running out of the building. No receptionist, no security. No one out in the open.

But since everything was new to him, he decided to investigate. He looked at the cars parked on the curb. There weren’t any moving cars on the streets, just the ones sitting stationary waiting for their humans. He walked into a grocery store on the opposite side of the road. The store had not been open for a while. Maybe years. There was grass growing on the floors through the cracks of the tiled grocery store. Tiles that had cracked on their own. It didn’t seem like there had been any disaster. Just the absence of humans. Humans seem to be integral to the functioning of the human world. Now the cash registers and cars just sat there purposeless, shapes of metals.

He walked out onto the street again and decided that he will not think about other humans. He was here. He was alive. He wanted to satisfy his curiosity. But what could he explore now. With no other humans, he couldn’t ask the date or which country he was in. Come to think of it he hadn’t uttered a word up until this moment. He opened his mouth and attempted to whisper a sound. Oooo. That sounded like an animal. Aaaa, he shouted louder. No one was there to hear him. Was he dreaming? No. He wouldn’t let a dream take away his joy of being alive. He was here and he had his playground in front of him. A land waiting to be explored by him – the only adventurer.

A big jar on the sidewalk suddenly caught his eye. This was the biggest jar he had ever seen. This was also the only jar he had ever seen, but he seemed to have forgotten that he had no memory. He went and picked the jar up. It was lighter than he had thought. It was as big as his upper body. He decided that this jar was going to be his jar. He owned it. He immediately became happy ad started thinking about all the things he would now do with his jar. He would fill it with water. No, he would fill it with food. No. He would collect everything. He decided that in order to make sense of what was happening to him, he would pick up anything and everything that interested him and then sit down to understand the world around him. What would that accomplish? Accomplishing still seemed like an alien concept to him. All he knew was that there were fascinating things around him he wanted to touch, see, hear and play with. He was going to collect.

What would he collect? He started walking bent over with his big jar. While walking down the road he picked up a few different stones and threw them into the jar. Down they went to the bottom of the jar clanking against the walls. The jar started making a sound as he walked with it now. The sound of the jar’s contents were a constant company to his footsteps. He was happy with each step. Clank clank. That was the sound of his collection following him.

He started finding even more interesting things as he walked across the empty town. There were objects laying here and there waiting to be collected. He picked up a comb, a hair pin, a brooch, a bag of polythene. His jar was starting to look good. It was colorful and noisy. He then picked up a piece of paper. No it was a photograph. Of people! Looking at it he remembered that this was what was missing. This was what people looked like. This particular photograph was of a family. How did it happen to be lying here on the edge of the highway? It must have belonged to someone. Just as this jar now belonged to him. Did this photograph belong to him now? He curiously searched for any other markings on the photograph. No. There weren’t any names or dates. Oh well. Maybe he would meet the owners or think about them later while looking at his jar. He tossed it inside the jar. It joined the rest of the trinkets, the collection.

He had been walking for a really long time without getting tired. The curiosity and this new mission had kept him occupied and engaged. He had also reached the outskirts of the city next to a mountain. But the mountain wasn’t as interesting to him anymore. He had been walking bent over, looking for trinkets for his jar. He decided to climb up the mountain in search his search for more.

This was when he found another interesting item. He picked it up before identifying it. He wasn’t afraid of what he would pick up. Everything was waiting to be picked up by him.

This.

This was a mirror.

He held it up and looked at himself. He was the collector. He felt good about it. His jar looked just as handsome in the mirror as it did in front of him.

But this was when he noticed something shocking. His jar rolled on its side as he jumped up in surprise.

There was another man behind him. Bent over. With a jar of his own. He immediately turned around to look at the man he saw reflected in the mirror. There was no one there. But in the mirror, the other man, just walked away in the opposite direction with his jar. Quiet a handsome jar at that too. It wasnt him, the other man was dressed differently. The contents of the other jar were also different. He shouted out trying to grab his attention but the other man just walked away – collecting. Scared and curious our collector looked again in the mirror. This time pointing it in different directions. There were people everywhere.

So many people were all around him, only in the mirror. Each person had a jar of their own and was unaware of the others. Who were all these people? Why couldn’t he see them outside the mirror. Men, women, children.

The collector felt afraid. He had thought meeting other people would make him feel happy. But now it seemed strange. Where were these people? Why couldn’t they hear him? He left his jar rolling on the side and started running around on the street with the mirror. He tried running with his arms outstretched hoping to touch someone, hoping to knock someone’s jar out of their hands. But there was no one. In the mirror everyone seemed to be in their own world, just calmly collecting. The visions of the people in the mirror and his screams became louder and were ringing hard inside the collectors head as he frantically ran in circles. In his frustration of not being able to touch anyone he threw the mirror up in the air and watched it fall down on the ground and

Shatter.

Silence.

He was by himself. There were no people. Not anymore. His shoulders drooped as he struggled to understand the situation. He looked at his jar – his handsome jar – his collection. And then looked up at the blackness.

A nice cozy cottage with its walls decked head to toe in shelves. Someone with a keen eyesight could look out from the window of the cottage and see that the collector was busy collecting a few blocks away. With his jar. Bent over.

The shelves were packed with jars just like that one. Jars were all over the floor and all over the walls, under the table and over the table. But these jars were not like the first jar. These jars were not as colorful, not as noisy, not as handsome.